Health Information

Taste Buds

If you love ice cream, thank your taste buds. Without them, you couldn't savor that satisfying sweet treat - or anything else for that matter. You may have noticed you have tiny bumps all over your tongue. Those aren't your taste buds, they're called papillae (say: puh-pill-ee), which help grip food as you're eating it. Most papillae contain taste buds, which have very sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli (say: my-kro-vih-ly). What? A hairy tongue? It might sound gross, but those tiny hairs have an important job. They send messages to the brain about how something tastes, so you know if it's sweet, sour, bitter, or salty.